Vol. 65 No. 8
The next item on the Orders of the Day is a motion by Deputies Norton and Keyes in the following terms:—
That the Unemployment Assistance (Employment Periods) Order, 1937, made by the Minister for Industry and Commerce on the 3rd day of February, 1937, and laid on the Table of Dáil Eireann pursuant to Section 7 (3) of the Unemployment Assistance Act, 1933, on the 17th day of February, 1937, be and is hereby annulled.
Are we going to get the Minister for Industry and Commerce to listen to the debate?
So long as there is a member of the Executive Council present, the usual practice is to allow a discussion to proceed.
Are we to take it that the member of the Executive Council who is present will reply on this motion? The member of the Executive Council present is the new Minister for Posts and Telegraphs.
There is collective responsibility. It is clearly established by the practice of the House that if a member of the Executive Council is in attendance, the business can proceed and that one member of the Executive Council can deputies for another.
Notice taken that 20 Deputies were not present; House counted and 20 Deputies being present.
Deputy Norton.
This motion is a private members' motion. It has not yet been moved, and I prefer not to proceed with the moving of it until such time as we can get the responsible Minister concerned to attend the House.
Of course, Deputy Norton knows that the Chair has no responsibility for the attendance of Ministers.
In fairness to the Minister for Industry and Commerce, to whom, I take it, Deputy Norton is referring, I should like to point out that he has been in the House practically all the evening dealing with legislation from his Department. I cannot say for certain, but it is quite possible that the Minister's absence is due to the fact that he is having his tea now.
I would like to do the same—to go out and have my tea. I am not moving the motion until the Minister attends.
I want Deputy Norton to understand that the unbroken practice in the Dáil has been that, so long as there is a member of the Executive Council on the Government front Bench, one who shares with his colleagues collective responsibility in the matter of policy, a motion can be moved, no matter what particular Minister or Department it refers to. The Deputy will understand that he is quite entitled to move his motion now.
May I call the attention of the Chair to this rather curious development in connection with this motion and a similar one that was moved about this time last year. On that occasion we had the rather unique experience that while the motion was moved and seconded, the Minister, although in the House, declined to reply. This year, when a similar motion is to be moved, the Minister is absent. I suggest that is something more than a mere coincidence, and I prefer not to move the motion until the Minister is present.
This motion refers to a promise made by the President, and I would have thought that the Civil Service as a body——
That is not the motion that we are dealing with at all.
The Minister for Industry and Commerce entered the Chamber.
I now formally move the motion. I want to call the attention of the House to the developments which have taken place during the past three years in respect of Employment Period Orders. This Order relates to persons who have holdings with a valution of over £4. In 1935 the Minister for Industry and Commerce made a similar Employment Period Order depriving such persons of unemployment assistance benefit for the period 17th April to the 21st May—a period of five weeks. He made a subsequent Employment Period Order in respect of the same class of persons, the Order to be operative from the 17th July to the 1st October of the same year, a period of 11 weeks. In all, the Minister's Employment Period Orders deprived small-holders with a valuation of over £4 of unemployment assistance benefit for a period of 16 weeks during the year 1935.
Last year, the Minister issued a new Employment Period Order of a much more extensive and comprehensive character than that issued during the previous year. The effect of the 1936 Order was to ensure that persons with a valuation of over £4 would be deprived of unemployment assistance benefit for a period of 34 weeks in 1936, compared with 16 weeks in 1935. For the year 1937 the Minister has issued another Employment Period Order, the effect of which is to continue to deprive persons with a valuation of over £4 of unemployment assistance from the 3rd March until the 26th October. Again, those persons are deprived of unemployment assistance benefit for a period of approximately eight months out of the 12 months.
On previous occasions I asked the Minister if any investigations had been made by him to ascertain whether employment was available in the areas in which those persons lived such as would ensure their being employed in a remunerative capacity in the period during which they will now receive no unemployment assistance benefit under the Unemployment Assistance Act. On that occasion the Minister indicated that no such investigation had been made, and, presumably, no such investigation has since been undertaken or has been specially made in connection with this Employment Period Order, so that we find, when we approach the consideration of this Employment Period Order, that it has been issued by the Minister without any previous investigation as to whether employment is available for those who will lose benefit during the currency of the Order. I presume that I am also right in stating that no inquiry of any kind has been conducted by the Minister, or by persons acting under his instructions, to ascertain the capacity of the land represented by a valuation of, say, £4 1s. to sustain a man, his wife and four, five or six children, during the currency of the Employment Period Order. The Minister, therefore, has made no investigation to find out whether employment is available, and has made no investigation to ascertain the capacity of the land to sustain a man and his dependents in those circumstances for the eight months which is prescribed in the Order.
The Minister, of course, must know —everybody who has any contact with the rural areas knows—that there will not be available in the rural areas during the period set out in the Order employment for all those, or even for a substantial proportion of those, who will be affected by the issue of this Order. If employment were available, the persons who are affected by the Order would not have to seek employment at the employment exchanges. They would not have to register at the employment exchanges and would not have to tolerate the degrading rotational system of employment which is being administered through the employment exchanges. We may take it, therefore, that so far as those persons are concerned, no employment is available to them in the rural areas. If it were, they would be only too glad to accept employment rather than to accept even the rotational schemes of employment which are being administered by the Minister's Department. So that the Minister, therefore, is not concerned whether employment is available or not. He must know, although, presumably, he is not prepared to admit it, that many of the persons concerned will not be able to obtain employment during the whole period covered by this Order. Many of them, in fact, may be able to get employment only for a fragmentary portion of the period covered by the Order
If the assumption of the Minister for Industry and Commerce is that persons affected by the Order are capable of sustaining themselves by husbandry on their own lands, we get a strange mentality in the attempt to justify the Order. The assumption, is, apparently, that a man with a holding of a valuation of £4 1s. is able to get out of his land, during the currency of the Order, after putting in labour and seed and manure into the land, a profit of £39 net. When you consider the kind of land that often carries a valuation of £4 1s., I think it will be obvious to Deputies who have contact with agricultural conditions that it would be quite impossible for a man with a valuation of £4 1s. to be able to make, each week, a net profit of about 14/- or 15/- by operating upon the land; and when we remember also that the man's house and piggeries and outhouses are taken into consideration in determining the valuation of his premises, we find that the actual land held by the man may be relatively small indeed.
I should like to inquire from the Minister as to what he visualises will be the position of those affected by the Order during the period of its currency. Up to yesterday, the 2nd March, persons in the category set out in the Order were entitled to unemployment assistance benefit, and the bulk of the persons, of course, are in the rural areas where the maximum unemployment assistance benefit is 12/6 per week. It is on that miserable pittance that they have been endeavouring to sustain themselves during periods of unemployment. One can imagine, in those days when the cost of living is so high and when it is continuing to soar, the plight of a man endeavouring to sustain himself and his wife and family on an income of 12/6 per week. However, that represents the income of the persons concerned up to the 2nd of March. It may be, of course, that the Minister will say that the man had some land, but even if he had land, he was not getting 12/6 a week. The fact remains that he could only get that amount per week according to the valuation of his means; but if the valuation of his means was 10/- a week, 3/6 is all the unemployment assistance benefit he would get. However, on an all-in income represented by a maximum of 13/6 a week, these persons were expected to sustain themselves up to the 2nd March.
On the 3rd of March the Employment Period Order becomes effective, and that person, if he had a valuation of £4 1s. 0d. or over, is deprived of unemployment assistance benefit until the 26th of October next. How is it expected that that person can sustain himself in the meantime? What is going to happen on the 3rd of March? What is going to happen in the second week; what is going to happen in the third week or the fourth week of this Employment Period Order? If the land is capable of sustaining the man, presumably he is expected by the Minister to set about and plough the land and even, presumably, to set about and sow it; but ploughing and sowing land are not operations that bring in cash. They represent expenditure, not merely of labour, but of money for manures and seeds, and instead, therefore, of being precipitated into a period when he can get some other source of income from the land, the man is really compelled to forgo his claim to unemployment assistance benefit at a time when, in fact, his expenditure is higher and will tend to be higher if he is to operate on the land which the Minister, presumably, expects to sustain him. So that, if those persons who are affected by the Order in the main are expected to live by tilling the land, the actual tillage operations will cause them further expenses and, during the period that that expense must be met, there is no income in the form of unemployment assistance benefit provided under the Act.
I said on a previous occasion that these Employment Period Orders had been issued without any thought, without any consideration for the hardships which would be inflicted on those who will be the victims of the Order, without any investigation as to the availability of work in the areas to which the Order applies, and without any proper regard to the conditions under which small farmers are living as a result of long continued unemployment followed by a current Employment Period Order of this kind, and the fact that the whole of the rural portions of the country are affected is the clearest possible evidence that the Minister, in issuing this Order, has issued a blanket Order, hoping to catch everybody in the blanket, and not concerned at all with the particular situations which exist in particular areas. This year there is a special reason, in fact, why, if any Employment Period Order is issued, it should not be made as effective as in former years. Everybody is familiar with the widespread flooding which has taken place all over the country. As a result of that flooding, land which might be available in a normal season is not available for tillage this year. Yet, notwithstanding the flooded condition of their lands, small farmers are now expected to be content with the position where their unemployment assistance benefit is withdrawn from them and where they can look upon flooded lands to sustain them for the eight months during which the Order will be effective.
The whole atmosphere surrounding this Order is conclusive evidence to me that it is not so much an Employment Period Order as an economy Order. The whole object of the Order is not based upon any evidence that work is available or upon any evidence that there is no actual need to provide unemployment assistance benefit for the persons affected by the Order. In my view, the underlying motive for the issue of an Order of this kind is to save money to the Exchequer, and the Minister this year is continuing the Order for a period of eight months, which is the same period over which last year's Order operated. That period, this year and last year, represents an increase of well over 100 per cent. in time from the standpoint of the currency of the Order. Although the Minister has spoken at many functions recently. we have not had any indication from him that it has been found unnecessary to provide unemployment assistance benefit during this period of eight months for persons with a valuation of £4 1s. and over. We had no indication from the Minister, and certainly no evidence from him, that it is unnecessary to provide benefit in the areas affected by the Order and to the persons in the categories prescribed in the Order.
This motion, therefore, has been put down in order to protest against that blanketing kind of Order by the Minister, and to give me an opportunity of explaining to the House how persons who are affected by this Order are expected to sustain themselves during the eight months which is the period covered by this Order. The Minister has not previously explained to the House how it is expected that persons of that kind can sustain themselves. We ought to know from the Minister, and the persons concerned ought to know, what exactly they are expected to do during the next eight months in order to make good in some form the unemployment assistance benefit which they are going to lose, and I hope we shall hear from the Minister on what grounds he seeks to justify an Order of this kind.
I think I can dispose very easily of the point that has been made by Deputy Norton. In each year, since the Unemployment Assistance Act came into operation, persons who are owners of land exceeding £4 in valuation have been excluded from the receipt of unemployment assistance over certain months in the year. We are making this year an Order similar to that made last year-I do not think anybody who has any knowledge of the subject will contend that any hardship was caused by the Order in previous years. It is reasonable to assume that persons who are owners of land exceeding £4 in valuation will be either occupied upon the working of that land or will be in a position to obtain employment with other farmers during this period of the year: In fact, the information which is at my disposal indicates that the comparatively small number of persons affected by this Order are either not available for employment elsewhere because they are employed on their own land or succeed in getting employment elsewhere. I gave Deputy Norton earlier on other occasions the information upon which I based that contention. That information, of course, is of a dual nature. The Department of Industry and Commerce is able to trace the employment history of individuals who are registered at the exchange, and the reports which I have received from the officers of the various branches throughout the country all indicate that the small number of persons who are excluded from unemployment assistance in consequence of this Order do, in fact, get employment or do not register for employment because they are employed on their own land during the period in which the Order is current. If these persons were not employed on their own land or did not obtain employment elsewhere, either one of two things would happen. If Deputy Norton's assertions are correct, either these persons would be destitute and would have to apply to the home assistance authorities for relief or else they would register at the exchanges for employment—bearing in mind that under our regulations they are entitled to preference in employment on works financed from central funds.
We find that last year the corresponding Order came into operation on the 3rd March. On the last Saturday of February, 1936, the number of able-bodied persons receiving home assistance was 4,965. Instead of that number increasing in consequence of the operation of this Order, it had decreased to 4,636 by May. There are three classes registered at the employment exchanges—those receiving unemployment assistance, those receiving unemployment benefit and those not receiving either. If the persons affected by this Order were available for employment one would expect that the number receiving unemployment assistance would be reduced by the Order, and the number not receiving unemployment assistance or unemployment benefit would be increased. In fact, the number of persons registered at the exchanges who were not entitled to receive unemployment assistance or unemployment insurance benefit decreased from 5,170 on the last day prior to the date on which the Order was made to 4,851 by May. These facts prove conclusively that the persons affected by the Order, numbering only 5,000 or 6,000 upon a register of 90,000, are not registered for employment during this portion of the year because, in fact, they are in employment.
They might have left the country.
If they had left the country they would not be affected by this Order.
Deputy Flynn of Kerry would be able to tell us something about that.
I should like the Minister to direct his attention to one aspect of the situation as revealed by the employment in agriculture last year. He issues this Employment Period Order on the assumption that people who are the owners of small holdings can get employment during this period, but he has not turned his mind to the fact that there was less employment in agriculture in the various provinces last year than the year before.
That is not so.
I shall give you the figures.
Not persons employed for wages, surely. The number last year was the highest on record for the country.
Will the Minister listen to this? Let us take the three provinces. If we take the agricultural labourers employed in Leinster, whether from the ages of 14 to 18 or from 18 upwards, and compare the figures for June, 1936, with those for June, 1935, the number shown as being in permanent employment reveals a fall of 437, while the number in temporary employment shows a fall of 1,279. Therefore, so far as paid labour was concerned there was a fall of 1,716 as compared with 1935.
There are very few of the people affected by this Order in Leinster.
If we take the total number of people in agricultural employment, we find that there was a fall of 3,888 in Leinster. Let us now take Munster.
Why does the Deputy not take the total figures for the country?
I shall give the Minister the total figures. I am saying that in Leinster there were 3,888 less persons employed in agricultural operations on the 1st of June, 1936, as compared with the 1st June, 1935. Taking Munster, the number of labourers permanently employed on the 1st June, 1936, as compared with June, 1935, shows an increase of 528—some achievement. On the other hand, there were 1,401 less temporarily employed at that date as compared with June, 1935, so that paid labour, permanent and temporary, in the province of Munster, showed a fall of 873 as compared with June, 1935. The Minister asked us to take the total figures. The total fall for all males in agricultural employment during that period for Munster was 4,839.
Does the Deputy say that there were less people employed in agriculture in 1936 than 1935?
I am giving the figures for Munster.
Will the Deputy give us the figure for the whole country?
I have given the figures for Leinster. I am now giving the figures for Munster, and I propose also to give the figures for Ulster and for Conuaught. The figures for Munster, as I have said, show an increase in permanent labour of 528 persons, but the number of temporary labourers shows a decrease of 1,401. The decrease, therefore, in paid labour in Munster as between 1935 and 1936 was 873. If we take the total number of males employed in agricultural operations, there was a fall of 4,839. Previously it was only Leinster, and then it was only Munster. Take Ulster. There is a fall in permanent labour of 50 last year as compared with the year before. There is a fall of temporary labour to the extent of 461. The total fall in paid labour in three of the counties of Ulster comes to 511. In all there was a fall of 1,596. I am prepared to hear the Minister say that these figures are not right. I admit I am putting them together rather hurriedly, but nevertheless, even in a hurried gathering of these figures from the Minister's own return, that is the position. That is only Ulster, the Minister will say. Let us come to Connaught. The fall in permanent labour was 22, temporary labour 363, so the total fall in paid labour in Connaught last year as compared with the previous year was 385. If we take all the males employed in Connaught in agriculture last year, there was a fall of 2,817.
I cannot identify these figures at all.
Will the Minister identify these figures, that the total number of males——
Over 18?
I am taking the total number of males from 14 upwards.
That does not affect this Order.
I will give the Minister what he is looking for. I will give him the whole country on the basis that I have given him here, that is, paid labour. I will take the total first, and, including paid and unpaid labour, the total number of males employed in agriculture had fallen from 573,531 in June, 1935, to 560,371, a fall of about 13,160.
These are not people employed in agriculture.
What does the Minister mean when he issues a return indicating the number of males engaged in farm work in each county in Saorstát Eireann, as returned on 1st of June?
As members of families, and a decrease in that number is not a matter for worry.
Everybody interested will take the total——
Of paid labour over 18 years?
The Minister can have it any way he likes.
That is the important figure.
Are people put down as permanent labourers from 14 to 18 not paid?
Any decrease in that number is no cause for worry.
Are people put down as temporary labourers not paid? I will give the Minister full credit for anything that is to his credit here. The Minister claims credit for this, that if we confine ourselves to permanent paid male labour over 18 years——
In other words, the people affected by this Order.
——there was an increase from 84,916 to 85,875.
The figure is 86,670.
What does the Minister mean by circulating on the 7th of February, 1937, in the Official Reports, a statement that the total number of males engaged in farm work, etc., permanent males 18 years of age and over, was 85,875? If he wants to correct that figure now, he may do so. I can only carry on this discussion on the basis of the figures already supplied, after, no doubt, very serious consideration by the Minister. The figures the Minister already quoted for employees 18 years and over were these figures, which show an increase of 959. On the other hand, we have temporary paid labour. I take it that the people who are now being marked out as coming under this Order are people who appear on these schedules as temporary paid labour.
Over 18.
The number under the classification of temporary paid labour over 18 was substantially less last year than it was the year before.
The figure represented 4,000 more.
What does the Minister mean then by circulating on the 20th February, 1936, a statement that temporary male labour, 18 years of age and over, employed in June, 1935, came to 60,982?
No, in 1935 it was an entirely different figure.
The Minister gave an answer on the 20th February, 1936.
That obviously related to 1935.
In that statement he said that the employment on the 1st of June, 1935, was 60,982.
That is the figure for 1936.
It is the figure given for 1935. How could it be given for 1936 on the 20th February, 1936?
The Deputy has not the correct figure.
I will ask the protection of the Chair to be allowed to put before the House one or two simple figures.
I understood the Deputy was inviting interruption, but apparently he will not have it.
It is the last thing I want when I am dealing with figures and when I am dealing with so important a subject. The important subject is that the people being dealt with under the Minister's Employment Period Order, and who are being regarded as in employment now, or will be regarded as in employment for the period of that Order, are people who appear on the Minister's lists as temporary males, 18 years of age and over. On the 20th February, 1936, the Minister gave the House information to the effect that on the 1st June, 1935, the number of such persons employed in the whole of the Saorstát was 60,982. On the 17th February, 1937, he informed the House again that on the 1st June, 1936, the number of such persons was 58,642, which means that in June, 1936, there were 3,340 persons of the class with which we are now dealing less employed in agriculture than the year before, in spite of what the Minister would claim, that there was a great increase in tillage in the country.
I think it is an astounding thing that the Minister would deal with this Order without making some reference to these things, and I also think it is dealing rather flippantly with the House that the Minister would intervene and would try to mix up these figures in the way in which he tried to mix them up. His answers are there on the parliamentary records and the figures are given plainly there and, as I say, do show that decrease. The previous figures I gave referred to general employment throughout the country. That has a bearing on the present situation but, if the Minister wishes, I will confine my arguments entirely to the fact that the people he is regarding as going into employment now automatically by the stroke of his pen belong to a class that had less numbers employed in the country last year than they had the year before.
To-morrow I shall be dealing with the systematic misrepresentation of important facts bearing on the well-being of this country.
No one will be more glad to see the Minister, or some of his equally skilled colleagues, facing up to the situation that exists and giving us some explanation of it.
The Minister made such a very unconvincing case that it is not necessary to spend much time replying to the few futile arguments he used in justification of this Order. There are, however, one or two misconceptions which ought to be cleared up. The Minister said that these people are encouraged to register during the currency of the Employment Period Order because of the fact that they get preference for employment on public works.
The same preference as if they had not been getting unemployment assistance.
The Minister can mend his hand if he likes, but that is the statement made by the Minister. He knows well that preference of employment is given to those in receipt of the maximum amount of unemployment assistance benefit.
Quite.
Therefore, a man who has 12/6 a week will get preference before a man with 10/- a week; a man who has 10/- a week will get preference before a man who has 5/-; a man who has 5/- a week will get preference before a man who has 1/-.
And so on.
The man who has 1/- a week will get preference before the man who has nothing. So that these people, whom the Minister thinks are tumbling over themselves in their desire to register at the employment exchange, can only get work when every other man registered in that exchange and drawing money has been exhausted. That is the kind of preference they get. They get a preference when there is a famine for men and only in that circumstance can they get any preference. Of course, the Minister knows, if he cares to examine the statistics of his Department or to consult the managers of employment exchanges, that there are still large numbers of persons on the employment exchanges books drawing 5/-, 6/- and 7/- in a variety of areas—Deputy Corish says up to 10/- in areas he knows—who are not getting any work at all, because there are other people on the books of the exchange drawing higher rates of unemployment assistance benefit, and these have to get the preference.
In other areas every unemployment assistance man has been absorbed.
In that case one might understand an Order of this kind being applied in that area, but why apply it in areas where those in receipt of unemployment assistance benefit are not yet absorbed?
The Deputy is getting away from his argument. If there is any prospect of work, surely an unemployed man will keep registered?
I shall deal with that. I wanted to lay the old story that the Minister told, that the man would get preference for employment. The Minister now wants to deny that he will only get preference when every other person registered has been put into employment. In other words, he will only get preference when there is a famine for labour.
The same preference as he would get if he had not received any unemployment assistance.
Surely the Minister is now saying something in absolute violation of the instructions issued by his own Department. I say, and I challenge contradiction of the statement, that a man affected by an Employment Period Order, while he may register at the employment exchange, can get no work there on a relief scheme until such time as every man drawing unemployment assistance benefit at that exchange has been put into employment. That is the truth of the matter and the Minister knows it.
In practice that works out, because these are the people getting the least amount of unemployment assistance.
So that a man gets no preference at all.
And suffers the least hardship because he is getting the least amount of unemployment assistance.
So that, when you rob him of everything, you can tell him he has nothing to lose.
He has at least enough land to pay the rates on £4 valuation.
Will the Minister ask the Minister for Local Government for the return showing the amount of rates outstanding? We had a statement from the Minister for Local Government to-day to the effect that he cannot even collect rents on cottages.
These are the people who pay their rates best.
That is a special stronghold—County Kerry.
The Minister now agrees that there is no preference for these persons, except there is a famine for labour. That is the kind of preference they are to get.
I do not agree.
The Minister wants to agree to nothing in a positive way, but he cannot deny the truth of what I am saying.
There is in every rural area a large number of persons available to take work for wages when it offers who are not entitled to unemployment assistance—sons of farmers of a larger valuation and so on. They are not unemployed.
We had a statement in the Press the other day from an ex-Deputy of the Minister's Party in Roscommon to the effect that they would not go to receive this unemployment assistance benefit under the conditions in which it was being made available and preferred not to receive the benefit, and because they were not registered at the employment exchange the Department would not give a grant there, although this ex-Deputy of the Minister's Party said that there were plenty of unemployed in the district. The fact remains that there is no preference for these persons at the employment exchange. The only time they can get a preference is when there is a famine for labour. That hare is run to earth, in any case. There is no preference at all. The Minister wonders why people do not register, why they do not go to a Civic Guard barracks to register, or write to the Department and say they are idle, and why they do not trudge a couple of miles——
They need only write their name on a postcard—they do not even have to stamp it.
They have to register personally if they live within three miles of an employment exchange. The Minister wants these people to trudge a few miles a couple of times a week to an employment exchange to register, with the knowledge that it is only when there is a famine for labour they are to get the preference. What is the purpose of registering.
To get work.
Which is not available. If it were available it would not be given to them in any case.
There is always the prospect of agricultural work.
Yes, of course, always the prospect, but there are good prospects and bad prospects.
There is no prospect if they do not register.
The fact that you have always people in receipt of unemployment assistance registering at the employment exchange and claiming benefit right through the whole year, notwithstanding your two Period Orders, is evidence of the fact that at no time is there anything like a scarcity of labour.
Not over the whole country it is true, but in particular parts there is.
This applies over the whole country and not to particular parts where there is a scarcity of labour. This applies where there is a superabundance of unemployed labour. The Minister said, of course, that one of the reasons why this Order is issued is because all the persons affected by the Order can get employment either on their own land or with some other farmer. If that is true, what is the need to issue the Order? They would not claim benefit if they could get work. Who would prefer to walk a few miles a couple of times a week and, after all the difficulties he has to encounter to get benefit, be content to accept 12/6 a week? They would prefer if they could work their own land remuneratively, or to work with another farmer, rather than to be dependent on employment assistance benefit. If the Minister says they can get work with other farmers, or that they can work on their own land, and, in fact, do not register, why then issue an Order of this kind? Surely these people will not then go near the exchanges looking for benefit, and there is no need to deprive them of benefit in this automatic way? The Minister knows that if this Order was not there, these people would go to the exchanges, because it is known that they cannot get employment with other farmers, and it is also known that their own land is not capable of sustaining them. While they may get an income during harvesting, they certainly do not get an income when preparing and ploughing the land, and it is during that period they are forced to seek unemployment benefit. If that were not so, there would be no need for an Order of this kind. It is because the Minister knows that in the absence of remunerative employment they would be clamouring at the exchanges that this Order is issued, so as to deprive them of unemployment assistance during that period.
